had posted the thoughts below in a related thread about day/night cycle, but also wanted to include here as it impacts camping/resting - and i do agree with other posters, that some work on these mechanics would go a long way when the game ultimately launches
it does make you wonder what larian's intentions are here for the final product when they introduce a 'time sensitive' narrative in a game that doesnt have any 'passage of time' or day/night cycle mechanics - and thats before you touch on the weird implementation of short/long rest narrative pacing and class balance, exhaustion penalty considerations, need for food and supplies, camp security or the threat of a random mob, etc. or larians preference for having all major dialogues occur at the campsite. others have shared similar experiences, but my early playthroughs missed a good amount of this narrative content/background due to trying to spread my party's encounters over a 'day' of adventuring, instead of cheesing easy rest access.
imho, the whole narrative buildup with the opening cinematic and 'tutorial' taking place on a crashing mindflayer ship in the 9hells where you earlier see what happens to those that dont get the tadpoles out timely, along with the constant reminders by your companions to make haste less you too turn into a illithid, only to find out that your special tadpole (and those of all the currently available dev-npc origin characters) is even more special than was previously believed, so much so that what you thought was a ticking tadpole time bomb in fact isnt, and is instead now 'just chillen' in your brain - seems really poorly executed, comes off unimaginative and fairly contrived. tbh, im just waiting now for tiamat to show up too with a claim on the tadpole (already got the hell and gith rider angles) to round out raphael and the netherese
related to the tadpoles, and this has been posted/discussed in the forums before, but im really worried that larian is going to go back to their roots and set up a showdown for the end of act1 where its the player and their chosen companions against those we didnt select turned into mindflayers - setting up the party and map locks for act1, which admittedly im not a fan of
